Simon

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously...

[Simon @JohnnyFingers]

@PunkRockClub Bloody Mary

[Simon @JohnnyFingers]

My sister Amanda Mitchell is fundraising for PROSTATE CANCER UK. Check out their @JustGiving page and please donate if you can. Thank you! #JustGiving https://t.co/vmgGUNgmN9

[Simon @JohnnyFingers]

@AdieMike24 Guehi doing a Johnny Stones and getting MOTM, although he should have had a brace

[Thegingerwig @thegingerwig]

City are back and so our the Match Day competition @everyone

Win a Cherki Tshirt

Retweet to enter

If Cherki scores first and City win we'll give away a T-shirt to a follower who retweets

All T-shirts are 3 for 2 this weekend

Grab yours here https://t.co/qFoUHAxpjA

[Simon @JohnnyFingers]

@Microinteracti1 Are you sure you're American?

[Simon @JohnnyFingers]

@footballmemorys 42 games, but just 57 points won it

[Simon @JohnnyFingers]

@citizzy Should have put Lampard in a City shirt

[PunkAndNewWave @NewWaveAndPunk]

🫡

[GET A GRIP @docrussjackson]

Oh fuck off you pathetic lying cunt.

Just how gullible, stupid, and historically and politically illiterate do you think people are?

Hitler didn't just fail to be 'far left', he built his regime specifically to destroy it.

Within months of taking power in 1933, the Nazis banned trade unions outright, seized their assets, and arrested their leaders. The first people sent to Dachau weren't Jews, they were German communists and socialists.

The KPD (Communist Party) and SPD (Social Democrats) were banned and their members hunted.

Ernst Thälmann, leader of the German Communist Party, was imprisoned for over a decade and executed on Hitler's direct order in 1944.

Rudolf Breitscheid, a socialist leader, died in Buchenwald.

Erich Mühsam, an anarchist writer, was tortured and murdered in a camp.

Carl von Ossietzky, a left-wing pacifist journalist and Nobel laureate, died from the effects of camp abuse.

These aren't fringe examples: they were the opening act of the #Holocaust's machinery, tested first on the left.

None of this happened by accident, as @elonmusk well knows.

The Nazis rose to power with major financial backing from German industrialists (Krupp, Thyssen, IG Farben) who saw Hitler as a useful tool to crush organized labour and the socialist movements threatening their fortunes.

Sound familiar?

That alliance between ultranationalist politics and industrial capital isn't a left-wing pattern. It's the textbook definition of the far right.

Calling this 'far left' isn't just wrong, it's backwards, and pushing it to 200 million people because it flatters a culture-war talking point is genuinely dangerous.

Again, as Musk well knows.

Historical literacy about how fascism actually operates is what lets people recognise it next time.

Getting this backwards doesn't just insult the dead, it disarms the warning system.

[UEFA @UEFA]

Further UEFA statement on FIFA plans: ⬇️

[GET A GRIP @docrussjackson]

Three national newspapers covered the same story on the same morning: the Mail and Metro, both controlled by Jonathan Harmsworth's DMGT, and the Telegraph, now owned by RedBird IMI, a consortium bankrolled substantially by Abu Dhabi state capital.

Different mastheads, different proprietors, but read side by side, they're instructive.

"Objective" news framing turns out to be a set of deliberate choices, and lined up together, a shared ideological lineage emerges.

The Mail frames a support payment as a "bribe," presupposing that living on benefits is a lifestyle choice rather than a status many are forced into. The Telegraph frames a social care funding measure as a tax "imposed" on "workers," reproducing the Thatcherite tax-as-burden frame over the alternative: tax as how a society funds what it has decided to do together. Metro's version is milder, but its transactional framing ("£4k if you let your children learn a trade") still treats support as a conditional favour rather than a policy with its own rationale.

None of these headlines needs to name "the Left" to do right-wing ideological work; the frames carry that lineage themselves, which is exactly what you'd expect given who owns the presses beneath them.

The Mail is the clearest case. "Bribe" is the load-bearing word, printed in scare quotes, giving the paper deniability ("we're just quoting critics"), but it's the biggest word on the page, doing the interpretive work before the reader reaches a line of copy.

A payment offsetting lost benefits could as easily be called "compensation" or "an incentive"; "bribe" imports corruption and vote-buying into a story about apprenticeship funding.

The personalisation matters too: "Burnham benefits 'bribe'" rather than "Government unveils apprenticeship bursary" fuses the policy to one man, turning it into a referendum on his judgment rather than the policy's merits.

The presupposition is doing quiet work of its own: "if their children choose job over living on welfare" assumes staying on benefits is a choice teenagers make, not a status many end up in for lack of alternatives: it's smuggled in as background rather than asserted as a claim you could contest.

And the "authority" is vague on both sides: unnamed "critics" call the system "mad," unnamed "government sources" insist otherwise. Neither is attributed; the clash of quotes is manufactured balance.

None of it is accidental placement, either: stacking the story against "Hannah's NHS surgeon beau gets a Hollywood makeover" flattens the register, so "the welfare system is mad" lands at the same emotional pitch as gossip, priming the reader for outrage rather than scrutiny.

The Telegraph runs the same ideological framing: emphasise the out-group's cost to "us," minimise the benefit, but on a different target: "Workers face new tax to fund social care" makes taxpayers, not claimants, the aggrieved party.

Note the nominalisation doing the opposite job: "levy," "contributions," and "the fund would pay for" delete the agent until the headline itself reintroduces one, but only in the direction of cost.

Metro is the control case. "£4k if you let your children learn a trade" is milder than "bribe," but "if you let" still frames the payment as conditional permission rather than support, and still centres the £4k over any account of what the reform is meant to fix. Even the least tendentious of the three isn't neutral, it's just softer.

The pattern is three outlets, three explicit targets, one shared method: cover a policy launch through "who loses" rather than through its stated aims or evidence.

That convergence says far more about UK press ownership and agenda-setting than any single outlet could on its own.

[Simon @JohnnyFingers]

@Rugbyworldmag Leinster best team, but knockout so not always best team wins

[Simon @JohnnyFingers]

Spectacularly missing the point there John, only in USA is the success of a sporting event measured in cash generated

[John LeFevre @JohnLeFevre]

America should host the World Cup every single time.

We've got 40+ stadiums that hold 65,000+ spectators. The rest of the world combined can barely match that.

FIFA ticket sales?
2010 (South Africa): $300 million
2014 (Brazil): $527 million
2018 (Russia): $541 million
2022 (Qatar): $686 million
2026 (Mostly USA): >$3 billion projected

Even adjusted for more teams (48 vs 32) and more group stage matches, these numbers are off the charts, and exclude hospitality, F&B, travel, hotels, etc.

Just ask Freddy.

[Simon @JohnnyFingers]

@DukeBlue1838 @DropAPinShow If that's correct, then what continent is New Zealand in, or Samoa, or all the other countries in that region?

[Simon @JohnnyFingers]

I don't have the discipline to decide my top 10 albums of all time, never mind a top 80 of the 80's. Probably not though

[GenTXer2 @GenTXer2]

This album DID NOT make my Top 80 Albums Of The 80s list, but would it make yours? 🤔

John Lennon & Yoko Ono: Double Fantasy (1980)

[Simon @JohnnyFingers]

@NotoldNOJE @phatalstu @NewWaveAndPunk @Schnitzel63 @FatOldAnarchist Was Buzzcocks and Joy Division the same gig?

[Simon @JohnnyFingers]

@KippaxKids Well said KK

[Henry Winter @henrywinter]

Manchester City fans have formed an independent supporters’ trust – “a missing link in the chain between the club and its fans”. The Citizens Trust will voice fans' views to the club and campaign on “ticket prices, unnecessary restrictions on how season cards can be used, accessibility, fixture scheduling, terms and conditions and more”. TCT becomes the latest independent supporters’ trust in English football.

“The lack of a supporters’ trust at City has long been a missing link in the chain between the Club and its fans,” says TCT interim chair Nick Clarke. “Now our fans have an opportunity to build a strong, collective voice to reinforce that link.

"Supporters across the country feel increasingly disconnected from the modern game, often feeling powerless in relation to decisions impacting both their clubs and traditions they’ve built over generations - Blues are no different. This is our chance to begin reversing that trend at City in a really positive way.”

Tom Greatrex, chair of the Football Supporters' Association, noted that City fans “have been a strong campaigning force on various important issues such as ticket prices and facial recognition technology in recent seasons” and added, “The trust will provide a democratic, inclusive, powerful voice for the club's fans and we'd encourage all supporters to get involved as members”.

TCT will also seek to celebrate “the history, heritage and traditions” of the club “to ensure future generations of Blues can support and access the club as we have in the past”. TCT will also work to “improve the lives of Trust members outside of football through events, health and well-being schemes”.

An interim board has been established of nine match-going City supporters “from a variety of backgrounds, but all with experience of effective, not-for-profit groups”. Elections will be held. City fans can join here https://t.co/plq1BNSfnG
#MCFC @MCFCTrust @WeAreTheFSA

[Man City Tickets 🏆🏆🏆🏆 @Ticketmancity]

Had a few messages over the last few weeks/month that our lovely ticket compliance officer Mike broadbent has been spending his days scrolling twitter, finding ppl tweeting their tickets for sale (at fv but most of the time much less). Cross checking if the account in question has ever contacted @ManCityHelp finding the supporter numbers via their DMs and issuing 6 month bans. This exact scenario has happened dozens of times im aware of.
As always. Tweet me the details of your ticket
Block
Price
Transfer method
I will tweet the tickets out and connect buyer and seller. We simply cannot let the bastards beat us 👍🏻
Share this far and wide

[stellacreasy @stellacreasy]

This is the video to share and show anyone who thinks brexit hasn’t been done ‘properly’ yet and going further would be good for this country.

Join the @labour4europe and let’s take back control.

Click their account to do so.